I'd rather think about it than watch it, for once...

Rating: 6/10 (4 November 2002)

Yeah, you read the summary right. I came out of this film almost laughing at how utterly bad it was. Only when I thought about it later did the odd subtlety of the piece occur to me - the fact that the virus in '28 days later' is called 'the rage', while 'le rage' is the French for 'rabies', which also saw Britain placed under 'quarantine'; the whole moral quandary of how we behave under duress, and indeed the question of man's place in the universe. These weren't bad ideas by any means, and some incredible films have been made on much much worse premises. So there you have it - '28 days later' has a fine director who knows how to capture true, gritty, desolation no less than he did years ago on Trainspotting; it has a decent enough idea of a plot; it has some whimsical black comedy, some poignant touches, and not a bad sense of drama; ultimately, it asks some cutting questions.
So why did I come out of this film thinking it was so, so bad? Well, sad to say, it fails from the word go on some of the most basic counts. The acting is appalling, inexcusable, sub-soap-opera, diabolical, more zombified than the numerous extras, terrible, excruciating... a thesaurus would barely do justice to how absolutely dire the acting performances were. Usually in a dodgy piece of independent cinema, at least we come out thinking 'how's about so-and-so for a fine future talent' - well the same couldn't be said about '28 days'. The soldiers and both female leads are particularly poor. This is sad, since with some decent acting the film could have had some good things come out of it - it would certainly not have been removed to the level of farce it had been after the first twenty minutes by the panto-style fare it offered.
Also alarming were Danny Boyle's shortcomings. Usually such a fine connoiseur of character-building, he happily resorts to feeble stereotypes - the boisterous, two-dimensional squaddies, the sinister tyrannical CO, the hardened feminist heroine. The only attempt at any sort of interesting characterisation lies in the hero's escapades towards the end, and in the tragic father-daughter relationship (though this becomes less impressive once you realise its complete dependence on 'Dusk Til Dawn'). All the characters suffer from severe lapses in rationality, not even explained by the exceptional circumstances they all find themselves in - in fact even less so: it simply doesn't make sense that in that sort of danger, 'Jim' would ever even consider going on his 'cheeseburger quest'. Besides the poor characters, the dialogue is hardly glowing either - I always say that a reliable sign of a poor film is an excess use of the line 'let's get outta here'; in '28 days later', I counted dozens of utterances. What could have been some genuinely scary bits, too, were so long in coming that we yawned rather than jumped when 'frightened'. To be honest, I've woken up next to scarier things than this movie - despite being billed as a horror film, this doesn't even pretend to be; poor publicity there. Plus, check on the 'goofs' section of this webpage some time soon and doubtless someone who's thought about the film more than me will have given it the dressing-down it deserves in terms of plot holes. Also, the first half-hour left me stunned that we could still be subjected to such blatant product-placement in this enlightened day and age.
Saddest of all, though, is that even the neat ideas the film does have are far from original. The concepts of growing brutality without law and order smack of 'Lord of the Flies'-cum-'Mad Max'; the messages that 1) animal testing labs are evil sadistic torture-pits, 2) man has come to the end of his time, and 3) man is such a horrible violent species by nature.... spare me, all of them, please. Thirty years ago this film would have been epoch-shattering, now it just smells dated, cliched, low-budget and half-hearted. Oh, and just in case you think I hadn't noticed, the whole first half of the film, with all its desolation, potential dread and tension, and all those deserted streets, isn't even original - just ask Charlton Heston.
Basically, see this film if you're eager to see how your lottery money is being totally and utterly wasted, and don't mind a standard of acting performance which my little cousin's nativity play puts to shame. To be fair, I suppose you could see this film if long-exhausted ethical debates interest you, or if you never thought it was possible to stop all the traffic in a part of london for a few hours. DON'T watch it if you want your confidence in independent cinema given a boost - see Donnie Darko if that's what you're in to. Ultimately, though, if you really want to see something bleak, desolate, with a quirky post-apocalyptic edge after a deadly disease... watch Heston's 'Omega Man'. Give '28 days later' a miss - if it was a pet, it would have been put out of its misery a long time ago. Deader than the zombies. Five farts out of ten.